“I'm always hoping for the nights that are inspired
where you almost have an out of body experience. And that's unbelievable when
that happens. That your coordination, your mind, everything is working above
normal. And it doesn't happen that often but you're always hoping and hoping
that that will happen again. And you keep trying for that. Then there's a level
that you don't let yourself fall below. But you're shooting for something much higher.
It's like an athlete. I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball
that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you
remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies. And there are
times when you can reach that. That's what you're constantly looking for is to
get beyond your usual capabilities. And you know that that's possible. You've
seen things happen that are beyond what is normally what you're able to do. A
tractor will fall on a man, tip over and fall on, and his wife sees it happen
and comes out and lifts the tractor. How did she do that? Five men couldn't do
it so what's locked up in her? What's locked up in all of us if we could only
call on it?”—Dave Brubeck, interviewed by Hedrick Smith for the PBS special “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck” (2001)
I doubt that, with whatever time he has left in his
career, Clint Eastwood will be making a biopic about Dave Brubeck, who died a couple of days ago. Unlike Charlie Parker,
the jazz pianist-composer-bandleader didn’t lead one of those short, tragic
lives marked by substance abuse and emotional upheaval, the kind that makes for
movie melodrama. Nor, unlike the title characters of Warren Leight’s 1998
memory play, Side Man, was he so
blissfully unaware of anything beyond his art that he failed to maintain a
stable household. He was married to the same woman for 70 years, and he closed
down the great quartet that made him famous in 1967 so he could continue that
lifestyle.
Brubeck disdained the “West Coast Jazz” label that
jazz critics gave him, as well as the word “bombastic” sometimes used by them
to deride his piano style. But his playing style reflected the same passion
that Bird--and all too many other jazz musicians who never lived to Brubeck’s
90-plus years—felt about a musical genre that Duke Ellington called “beyond
category.” Let’s hope that right now, he’s found a celestial instrument of 88
keys as he greets his old bandmates saxophonist Paul Desmond and drummer Joe Morello as they swing
into “Take Five” again.
(Photo shows the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1967, one
of their last appearances together, at Congress Hall Frankfurt/Main (1967).
From left to right: Morello, bassist Eugene Wright, Brubeck and Desmond.)
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